Hydrogels are water-swollen polymers that are useful in a variety of biomedical device applications due to their biocompatibility, high water content, and in some cases, responsiveness to stimuli. Unfortunately, the mechanical fragility of most hydrogels poses a formidable obstacle to their application in many applications, which require a high elastic modulus and high mechanical strength. Although a number of strategies—such as high crosslinking density, fiber-reinforcement, and copolymerization—can be used to improve the strength of hydrogels, the enhancement afforded by these often involves some compromise in the desired characteristics of the original material, such as hydrophilicity, transparency, or permeability. For many tissue replacement applications, maintenance of these properties is critical to their performance/in vivo/. Accordingly, there is a need in the art to develop hydrogels with high values for Young's modulus and tensile strength that would at least overcome some of these disadvantages. The present invention addresses these needs and provides a strain-hardened interpenetrating polymer network hydrogel with high elastic modulus and a method for fabricating this material.